Apricot started in Dublin and has worked from Lisbon since 2016. Clients are split between the two countries, and the studio has learned to be useful in both.
Two countries, one hour
Lisbon is an hour behind Dublin in the morning only in the sense that it feels like it. The time zones match, which makes working across the two easier than it sounds. What differs is the rhythm: Portuguese clients want a conversation before a quote; Irish clients want a quote before a conversation. We do both.
What a club taught us
Richard co-founded GAA Portugal, and the club has been running on our platform since it existed. That is where most of our best decisions came from, because a club is the hardest customer: volunteers with no time, a treasurer who changes every two years, parents who email at midnight, and a committee that will not read a manual.
If a treasurer cannot see who has paid without ringing us, the feature is not finished. If a membership renewal needs a human to notice it, it is not a renewal. If posting match photos takes longer than the match, nobody will post them. Each of those became a feature, and each was used by a real club before it was offered to anyone else.
Why a small studio
The studio is deliberately small, with a long list of trusted collaborators. Clients get one point of contact, one invoice and no handovers. The work that used to need a large team is done with modern tools, and the responsibility stays in one place. When something breaks at midnight on a Saturday, the people who built it are the people who answer.
Where next
More clubs and associations, in both countries. The platform we built for one club is becoming an edition others can run. And the studio stays small.